


Missing something...

by lonely_lovebird



Series: Pale K-Science Love [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bromance, Bromance but better, Brotp, Confessions of pale love, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drift Bond, Drift Side Effects, It's like BrOTP but better, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pale ship fic, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lonely_lovebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann Gottlieb has everything he needs in his life. His wife, Vanessa, his newborn son, and his family (though he's not really sure he wants them). But despite the happiness that the world is saved, he's still missing something.</p><p>Hermann Gottlieb left part of him in the Drift.</p><p>Companion fic to It's called...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing something...

**Author's Note:**

> Vanessa Gottlieb is like a British Gina Torres. And she is my hero.

When Hermann had been writing the coding for Mark I jaegers, Christine Lightcap had told him something he didn't really understand until many years later. "Two people who Drift together achieve a kind of intimacy that doesn't exist in human relationships," she said with a secret smile. This idea was his guiding light to program the jaeger's responses to the dual pilots.

But he didn't really understand it. The first person that Hermann was even remotely close to was Vanessa, and he thought that might be what it meant. Vanessa was a joy to have in his life, and she was a bright beacon during the darkest days of the decline of the Jaeger program.

Then came his Drift with Newton and the kaiju. At first he didn't really feel any different, the concern over the new knowledge that had been gained through the drift being at the forefront of his mind. He and Newton had raced back to the Shatterdome to stop the mission that was doomed to fail.

They had to tell Stacker about the breach.

And then suddenly the world wasn't ending and Mako and Raleigh were coming back to Hong Kong and the clock stopped and to Hermann it was almost as if he was in a trance. All the work had paid off because there were going to be no more kaiju. No more theories, not more impossible math problems, no more fear.

Newt recounted his version of the Drift, with occasional input from Hermann, who was content to let his partner shine. When Newt teared up and had to place his head in his hands, Hermann took over, explaining the rest of the story in far more clinical and impersonal terms.

There was celebration and mourning after, but Newton retreated to the room he shared with Hermann, claiming that he was tired and had a headache from the insurmountable Drift he'd just accomplished. Hermann almost followed but then the call he'd been waiting for came in from Germany.

Vanessa was having her baby.

Hermann didn't even have time to say goodbye to anyone before he was on a helicopter on his way to Munich, where Vanessa was staying with his mother. He felt the deep regret on the flight take him over. He and Newt had drifted not only with the kaiju, but with each other.

His brain played what he had seen over again in his mind as if it were a film. Of Newton learning music from uncle, his first year as a student MIT, the day he got his tattoos, his first day teaching a class and the fear and anxiety that plagued him.

More than anything during the duration of the flight, Hermann wanted nothing more than to have Newt with him to discuss the post-Drift effects, and possibly just to hold, though Hermann had never figured himself for one with such tactile needs.

More than anything he needed Newt around to listen while he puzzled out the future. The future of the Pacific, the future of the world, the future of himself and his new family. Newt understood the way he needed to puzzle things out like a math problem until he had reached an understandable conclusion.

And he needed to know when he had started calling his colleague by the shortening of his given name, and when it had ceased to bother him.

The thoughts of Newt and the Drift faded into the background when he landed in Munich, taking a taxi to the hospital to be with his beautiful wife.

It was a short labor, and suddenly he was a father of a beautiful squaling baby boy, with a head of pitch black curls and mocha skin just like his mother. Vanessa cried as she held him and looked up at Hermann who felt tears stinging the back of his eyes.

"What are we going to call him?" she asked with a smile.

Hermann had already decided when he watched the blip on the LOCCENT screen go dark.

"Stacker," he said quietly as he cradled the wailing baby in his arms. "We'll call him Stacker."

Vanessa wiped her tears and looked at Hermann with such understanding he couldn't help but be reminded why he had fallen in love with her in the first place. Her heavy English accent slipped through as she nodded softly.

"Stacker Gottlieb."

So Hermann found himself back in his mother's house in Munich, with Vanessa and his newborn baby. He felt as if he were caught in some alternate reality, dealing with being a father and the end of the kaiju invasion, and dealing with his family.  
Vanessa was a support but when she was sleeping while Hermann watched over Stacker, cradling the curious baby in his arms, there were several whisper-shouting matches between himself and his mother in German about his father, who was now dealing with the backlash of supporting the Pacific Wall Program.

When Vanessa was awake there was planning to be done, deciding on where they would like to live, now that the world was back to normal. Hermann sent emails to Newt, with photos of Stacker and Vanessa, Stacker and his mother, Stacker and his siblings, and details of his health, along with a few punctured remarks about the habits Newt had most likely fallen back into without Hermann there to keep him in line.

Newt's replies were worrisome. From their content and Hermann's understanding of Newt, he knew that his colleague - no, his friend, was suffering. There were indications of insomnia, nightmares, and even possible depression.  
Hermann wanted nothing more than to fly back to Hong Kong immediately and assist in any way he could.

With Vanessa still unable to sleep most nighs because of Stacker, his return to clear out his side of the lab would be delayed. He only hoped that the delay would not keep him from meeting up with Newton at all.

The effects of the Drift were now becoming more apparent.

On the nights that Vanessa and Stacker both slept for several hours at time, Hermann had nightmares. It was always when he was able to fall into a deep sleep, when his subconcious took control of his mind. The images it dredged up were the things out of the most twisted horror sotry.

Not only did he have the memories of the infant kaiju, he had Newt's memories, and Newt's memories of the first kaiju Drift. Blood and carnage and the ever pressing fear that he would not be able to save anyone and the kaiju would destroy the world.

But there were no kaiju.

Vanessa was safe. Stacker was safe. Newton was safe.

It was when Vanessa finally became aware of the nightmares that the discussion Hermann had been avoiding happened. She started the conversation as they sat at the dining table while Hermann's mother nagged in German at Hermann's siblings who had come to see the baby.

"Hermann," she began gently, "will you talk to me?" She said it in English, the only language they had between the two of them that the rest of the family did not speak. A chill seeped into Hermann's stomach, knowing that this must be the conversation she wanted to have that no one else could listen in on.

"Of course, Vanessa." He took her hand in his. Her other arm held a drowsy Stacker to her chest as she softly oscillated to lull him into a sleep.

"You don't seem the same, not since you were sent to Hong Kong. You seem different. You told me about the Drift but if I might be so bold, perhaps it wasn't just your drift with the kaiju that changed you." Oh, but she was perceptive. Hermann was reminded why he had fallen in love with her. "I've never understood the concept of the Drift, but I think something happened with you and Newton."

Her open ended prompt was enough to put Hermann enough at ease to elaborate on a truth he had somehow already acknowledged in his subconcious mind.

"When you Drift with someone, you create a connection that can't be made any other way. A closeness unrivalled in human relationships. Newt and I, we..." And then for the first time in many years, Hermann knew that he was at a loss for words. He still tried valiently. "We were...friends before. We always cared for each other, if only to ourselves."  
Vanessa arched one of her perfect eyebrows. "And now?"

"I have seen his darkest secrets, and I have seen his childhood, his most emotional memories - and he has seen mine. We are...brothers." The word wasn't right, it felt out of place - like the wrong variable in his equations. "No, we are more than that."

He watched as his mother gabbed in German about doing dishes and how she raised her children better. "I can't pinpoint what we are, not right now. I'd like to speak with Raleigh and Mako about the connection made in the Drift before I make any irrational conclusions."

Vanessa smiled. "Before you rely on math like you always do, my love, why don't you just tell me what you feel?"

His wife was always the better part of him, Hermann couldn't help but think. She was so brave and bold, and stunning in ways that Hermann had always been lacking. She encouraged him to be the best that he could be.

"I feel like my life is now nearly complete," he said slowly. "I have my family," he cast a glance around at his teasing siblings and exasperated mother. She was older than the mother in his memories, her hair now as white as the snow, and there were wrinkles on her face he didn't know. "I have my wife," he gazed deeply at Vanessa who watched him from beneath the fringe of her wild and unruly mocha curls. "And I have my son." Stacker was now sleeping peacefully against his mother's breast.

"But...?"

"But now I am missing Newton Gieszler."

To Hermann's eternal surprise, his wife was the most understanding of his predicament. He had heard of the jealous wives who disliked their husbands connection with their Drift companions, but Vanessa was bright and full of the spark of what made up the best of humanity.

"Do you love Newt?"

"Not the way I love you," Hermann said quickly. There was a glint in her eye, a secret that she wouldn't tell, something dangerous.

"No, that wasn't what I asked you, Hermann Gottlieb. Do you love him?"

Hermann's mind drifts back to when he found Newt, unconcious on the floor in the Pons he created from scraps, and the fear that pulsed through him. He thinks of Newt's determined and serious air as he set up the drift with the kaiju on the streets of the Boneslums and how proud Hermann felt, and also how scared.

He thinks of a million other memories of Newt he shouldn't even have and he's filled with a bubble of an emotion he hadn't quite been able to put his thumb on before that very moment. Vanessa had a full smile on her face, teeth and all.

"Yes."

Vanessa leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. "Then go and get him."

With the support of his wife now behind him, Hermann was off like a rocket, out the door, wobbling on his cane as he grabbed his coat and tore off down the street to hail a cab. He could hear his mother shouting in German.

"What is he doing, crazy boy? Where is he going?"

But he knew where he was going, he knew what he was doing - what he had to do. At the airport he used the last of his power as a K-Science officer to take the next flight to Hong Kong. It would most likely be the last time he could commandeer such privelages, but at least this time it was worth it.

 

The Shatterdome was deserted. Hermann slowly wobbled down the empty corridors, hearing the echoes of his footsteps. Devoid of life, the Shatterdome felt like something out of a horror film. Hermann could practically see the ghosts of jaegers and their pilots drifting through the walls.

Down in the K-Science division, all the lights were on. It was the only indication that there might be life in that particular section. The door to the room previously shared by Newt and Hermann stood ajar, the light flowing in onto the floor. Hermann moved to the doorway to peer cautiously around the corner.

Newt was in his bed, tossing in the sheets as if he were fighting invisble monsters of his own. He clawed at the air frantically before bolting upright screaming hoarsly.

"Hermann!"

It was practially a shriek, his voice high, raspy, and strained. The look in his eyes was wild, desperate, and frightened. All the time that Hermann had been with his family, he had left Newt in the empty Shatterdome alone to deal with all sorts of post-traumatic stress and post-Drift problems. Guilt welled in his soul like an inky black pool.

Hermann softly shuffled his way inside, warily watching the expression on Newt's face.

"Newton?" He wasn't even sure if Newton was awake, or of present enough mind to see him, or hear him. But when Newt's eyes landed on him his fear was assuaged. Newt blinked rapidly, trying to dispel some image from his mind.

"Oh, hey Hermann," he was trying to sound cool and collected but he failed miserably. "Sorry, I..."

Hermann parked at the edge of the bed, leaning on his cane, angled away from the face that held so much fear and betrayal and showed the clear signs of insomnia and heavy stress. With no one to keep him in line, Newt had obviously let his mind run away with his body.

"Do you ever feel empty, after...after the drift?" he asked quietly, adjusting his cane. If there was any word to describe his post-Drift hangover, empty was probably the closest he could find.

"Yeah, like - way a lot."

So he wasn't the only one. It was comforting, yet also frightening. It meant there was something for them on the horizon and Hermann wasn't sure he was ready to face this new future. But then again, he wasn't ready to face any future that didn't include Newton Geiszler.

Newton's voice had settled back into familiar patterns, and it jumped as he spoke. "What are your thoughts on soul mates?"  
The question came from seemingly out of nowhere and Hermann could barely contain his scoff. "Newton," he felt the exasperation in his tone, "I'm not here to discuss such ridiculous notions as destiny and souls --"

"Whoa, easy Doctor, I'm just asking a simple question. Do you believe in soul mates?"

The first thing that came to mind was the countless numbers of jaeger pilots he'd seen pass through every Shatterdome he'd ever been stationed at. He brushed the thought away.

"In a romantic sense?" His next thought was of Vanessa.

Newt shook his head. "In any sense."

This called up the particular memory of a set of pilots from one of the early days Mark I jaegers. They'd passed the program and had tested well to be co-pilots but they didn't fit Dr. Lightcap's theory of Drift compatibility. They detested each other. They spent most of their time bantering a battle of words between them, ever back and forth and back and forth.

But then they went into the test drift with their Jaeger, Oakley Hybrid, and it was the strongest neural handshake they'd seen until that point. When they came out of the Drift, they had changed on some level, they still bickered and bantered but it was as if the fondness became more apparent.

There was gentleness after, and Hermann still had never seen the likes of it.

He told Newton as such. Newton only nodded, silent. Hermann didn't know what else to say so he let his mouth decide. He thought of the nightmare Newton must have been having before Hermann arrived.

"I've been having nightmares since I went home," he said quietly. "Vanessa has been worried, and I fear she may be right - the Drift with the kaiju has fundamentally altered my brain."

Hermann immediately regretted what he said. It wasn't exactly what he meant. And this was why he had trained himself to never speak before he made a close detailed script of exactly what he meant to say. He and Vanessa did believe that he had been altered. But it wasn't his Drift with the kaiju, it was his Drift with Newt.

Newt seemed slightly offened. "What do you think it did to me? I Drifted with a kaiju twice!"

"But I am not you, Newton," he sighed. "I missed you, contrary to what I'm sure you believed."

There was a moments hesitation before Newton said the words that made his heart soar in a way he'd never felt before.

"...I missed you too. But I'm really glad you got to be there when Vanessa had the baby." It was genuine, the emotion. Hermann had worked in a lab with Newton long enough to tell. And perhaps some of the Drift had refined his understanding of Dr. Newton Geislzer.

A smile turned up at the corner of Hermann's mouth. "She wants to meet you, and I want you to meet Stacker. He's beautiful, with her hair and her eyes, and more than likely my intelligence, so at least he'll be far more advantaged when he reaches primary school age. Unlike me."

There was a pause. Hermann had never felt the heavy air more acutely than in the moment he sat on tenterhooks, waiting for Newton to make the next move. It was like they were playing verbal chess, familiar the way their lab-time banter had always been.

It was their banter that Hermann felt was the prime link that led to the ease of their Drift. It was like the Kwoon Combat Training for the pilots but for intellectuals. They proved their equality through their words and their science, rather than their bodies and their brawn.

“Do you regret the Drift?” Newt finally asked, spitting it out like he was afraid if he waited a moment longer and he would lose his nerve. “Because I feel like after that, you took part of me and left part of you behind. Like in my soul, Hermann.”

Part of Newt in his soul. All his regret and guilt over leaving nearly tripled in that one moment. He had left Newton, taken part of his soul, gone home to Germany and forgotten him.

“...I do not regret the Drift.” It had given him insight into Newt and strengthened the bond that they had been tentatively nursing for years as colleagues in a matter of minutes. “I only regret that I left and didn’t take you with me.”  
He could have saved them both the trouble of all their pain.

Newt’s arms were suddenly around him, haphazardly thrown over his shoulders, holding him tightly as Newt buried his face into the space between his trapezius and sternocleidomastoid. A piece of Hermann settled into place and he wrapped his arms around the frame of his much shorter…Netwton.

There was a word for this, but he didn’t know what it was.

“What are we going to call this thing that we have?”

Newton suggested something convoluted and Hermann rolled his eyes as they relaxed against his bed in the gathering light. Hermann suggested Drift companions and Newton made a pop culture joke that only he understood.  
It was nice, it was familiar, it was Newton.

“There is a word for this,” Newton said, echoing Hermann’s thoughts. Perhaps they were ghost-drifting along the pathway forged by mutual caring and suffering. “But I don’t really want to puzzle it out right now, so actually I’m going to go to sleep and you’re going to stay here because if you leave I’ll probably have nightmares again where you die and I don’t want to deal with that trauma right now Hermann.”

His voice sounded heavy and his words began to slur.

“Very well. We can have a chat when you wake up. I’ll simply keep you company.”

Newton pillowed his head in the crook of Hermann’s arm, wrapping one arm over Hermann’s torso and the other up under Hermann’s shoulder. It should have been uncomfortable but with the feeling of Newt pressed against him, breathing deeply as he fell asleep, he couldn’t help but relax.

It was dark and quiet for a few long minutes. The hum of the generator running the power vibrating through the metal walls of the Shatterdome. It was peaceful in a way the Shatterdome had never been before.

“I swear,” Newt said suddenly, sounding like the petulant child who refused to fall asleep. “There’s a name for this, but I just don’t remember.”

Hermann chuckled then, wrapping his arm around Newt’s back and pulling him close as Newt captured his other hand in his own and entwined their fingers. It was sweet, innocent, and the closest the K-Science Officers had ever been.

But it was nice in a way Hermann had been missing. He lay awake, listening to the soft snores begin from Newt, feeling the tension in his back unwind into the bed that had been so uncomfortable when he’d been sleeping in it alone.

Hermann Gottlieb couldn’t fathom a world without Newton Geiszler in it, and so he let his methodical mind set to work planning around his new future with Stacker, Vanessa and Hermann. The math whirled around in his brain like a hurricane.

It was all encompassing, the feeling of peace and contentment that suddenly filled his chest as his fingers worked their way threading through Newt’s unruly dark hair. It was the knowledge that for the first time in his life he could have everything that he wanted - and everything that he deserved.

His eyelids grew heavy. He would worry about his father and mother later. He had Vanessa and Stacker and now he had Newton.  
Anything was possible.

And with those bright thoughts mingling with his numerals, Hermann Gottlieb drifted off to a peaceful sleep.


End file.
